Vineyard Landscapes and the Nature of Change
Paul Z. Goldstein, PhD

Long ago, on the order of 15,000 years or more, much of North America was covered by a wall of ice estimated at nearly half a mile in thickness. Periods of glaciation, or ice ages, occur in cycles determined by a combination of forces related to the angle of the Earth's orbit around the sun. During the Pleistocene epoch, the most recent era of pre-history, North America was visited by four glacial periods. While each of these left its mark on what we now know as Martha's Vineyard, the Vineyard's modern natural landscape arose during the time since the most recent glaciers receded about 12,000 years ago.

The geological genesis of the Vineyard is obvious as one travels across the Island. As glaciers flow, they push piles of rock and sediment ahead of them. When they recede, those frontal piles remain, defining the edge of the glacier's advance. The Vineyard's hilly, rocky northern tier is what is known as a terminal moraine, a ridge of glacial debris left by the retreating glaciers. As these glaciers melted, meltwater washed through the morainal debris, carrying smaller particles of rock and sand southward. Gradually, the glacial meltwaters deposited the rock and sand that form the Vineyard's central southern outwash plain. The Vineyard's outwash plain was almost certainly not the product of a single glaciation, but is rather the product of several glaciation events. The edges of glaciers are complex, shifting areas, and much of our region, including the moraines and outwash plains of our sister islands, was being re-formed at the same time the Vineyard's outwash plain was being overlain with new layers of rock and sand.

Even during the formation of the outwash plain, the activity of the receding glaciers continued to reconfigure the landscape. As rivers of meltwater rushed south across the Island depositing sand, they left shallow channels across the outwash plain whose remnants can still be seen in the narrow, finger-like coves of our Great Ponds. If we stand at the heads of these coves and look northward, we see the dry extensions of these ancient meltwater riverbeds, known as frost bottoms.

In the centuries since the landscape that includes Martha's Vineyard was crafted by glacial movement and melting, most of it has been submerged by the rising sea level. The Vineyard is one of several above-water remnants of what was once a vast coastal plain stretching more than a hundred miles south and east of the current Massachusetts coast.

The Martha's Vineyard landscape continues to change. During the 20th century, Islanders witnessed the shrinking of many of our open areas-areas that formerly supported farms, fields, and grassy shrublands-and their conversion to more wooded landscapes. Much of the change we see in historical time has been due to a complex combination of natural forces and human activities. A central question facing Vineyard conservationists is one of understanding how the assemblages of plants and animals that occur on the Island came to be and what kinds of habitats they require to survive.

Historical ecology and restoration: A scientific journey

Studying the historical configuration of the Vineyard's natural landscape tells us how to design and implement conservation priorities. Our understanding of which habitats were native and which were man-made, or anthropogenic, is crucial to protecting native plants, animals, and landscapes.

One of the more obvious recent changes to the Vineyard landscape has been the shrinkage of open, grassy areas during the last century, a change that parallels the decline in agriculture and husbandry. But understanding this change in the structural landscape is hampered by the impact of European farming activities prior to the 20th century. Thanks to work of scientists at the Harvard Forest, The Nature Conservancy, and Sheriff's Meadow Foundation, it has become obvious that "pure" grasslands were never widespread on the Vineyard landscape, and that many of the creatures supposed to have been associated with "native grasslands" were in fact associated with grassy shrublands-a native habitat that is genuinely threatened-and were able to endure the spread of agriculture and sheep husbandry during 18th and 19th centuries only because they could survive on grazed landscapes.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of historical information that has helped to illuminate the Vineyard's historical landscape. Descriptions of early Vineyard residents, visitors and naturalists, data accumulated by studying soils and pollen cores, studies of the habitat requirements of rare species, and in-depth works on the historical ecology of Vineyard vegetation have all contributed to a clearer understanding of the early Vineyard landscape.

Historical Data
[in progress]

Invertebrates
Fortunately, during the last 10 years, a wide of variety of scientific studies have come forth to illuminate the complexities of biological restoration and setting management priorities. In the mid-1980s, Sheriff's Meadow Foundation personnel were among the first Vineyard land managers to conduct land management based on science. SMF conducted some of the first inventories of threatened invertebrates on Martha's Vineyard, and worked closely with scientists in museums and universities to build a more refined understanding. In partnership with The Trustees of Reservations, SMF personnel are developing an integrated database and reference collection of threatened invertebrates, including butterflies, moths, ants, and certain beetle groups, for use in surveying and monitoring the effects of management practices on conservation lands. These resources appear to be revolutionizing our thinking of how threatened areas are identified and managed.

An unexpected but important series of developments helped shape the direction of conservation science on Martha's Vineyard. The Island has always been well known as a haven for rare birds and plants. But many of these species are either non-residents or have habitat requirements that are poorly understood. Building on the work of the great entomologist Frank Morton Jones, a Chilmark resident who studied the butterflies and moths of the Vineyard for over 30 years, Sheriff's Meadow personnel began to search for species of rare insects on the Vineyard-butterflies, moths, and beetles-that had been wiped out or become extremely rare on mainland New England. These efforts have resulted in the documentation of more than 30 populations of endangered insect species currently protected under the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act. Many of these occur nowhere else in New England. But most importantly, our understanding of the habitat requirements of these animals has led to a more refined understanding of Vineyard habitats in need of protection. For example, many of these species appear to reside only in the grassy shrublands located in the Vineyard's frost bottoms. These areas, which Sheriff's Meadow has an ongoing mission to study and protect, are in dire need of management. Currently, less than 10% of the Island's frost bottom habitat is under any kind of active wildlife management. This is one of the most serious land management problems confronting Island conservationists as natural succession and encroaching development fragment the habitat.

Management Techniques
Fire is believed to have been an important component of native sandplain landscapes, and its suppression has contributed to the disappearance of those landscapes Prescribed burning, if properly conducted, is an important land management tool, not only because it protects and restores species that require open habitats, but also because it prevents the dangerous build up of fuel loads that could result in catastrophic wildfire if left unchecked. Land management on Martha's Vineyard took a great stride forward in 1986, when managers from Sheriff's Meadow Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, The Trustees of Reservations and the Nantucket office of the Massachusetts Audubon Society undertook the first prescribed burn at Katama Plain, with assistance from the Vineyard Conservation Society and a host of volunteers. This marked the first time prescribed fire was used as a management tool on Martha's Vineyard, and initiated an important era. In 1991, Sheriff's Meadow Foundation was a founding member of the Martha's Vineyard Sandplain Restoration Project, a coalition of conservation organizations created to coordinate fire management and ecological restoration on conservation land across the Vineyard. Today more than 2,000 acres of Martha's Vineyard's conservation lands are under active, restorative fire management.

Although prescribed burning can be difficult to implement, fire techniques are far superior as wildlife management tools that techniques involving soil alteration, such as plowing. The challenge remains to identify which suites of animals and plants can be most effectively monitored to ensure that our techniques meet the most rigorous of scientific standards.